Super Mario Galaxy And Other Wii Games Getting HD Releases...In China

A bunch of Nintendo games are getting the HD treatment and getting re-released in China, but not on the platform you would expect. It looks like Mario, Link and a bunch of their pals are now adventuring on the NVIDIA Shield.

Nvidia Shield is coming to Mainland China.

Will be priced at RMB 1499.

The Shield will focus on games in China. It will run popular PC games as well as Nintendo Wii games such as Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess and Punch out. pic.twitter.com/gJlZrclps4

The above tweet comes to us from industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, who explained that a bunch of Nintendo games are now available on the Shield in China. There's a bit to unpack here, so don't get too excited just yet about anything like this happening outside of the region.

For starters, the Shield hardware that's available in China was developed specifically for the region. It boasts a local store, search features, voice controls and more. It's even available at a super reasonable price; setting gamers back just $226, according to Engadget.

In a statement from NVIDIA, this all came from the existing partnership between the company and Nintendo, who uses NVIDIA's Tegra chip in the Switch. Since Nintendo's platforms have not been available in the region, this was seen as a way to get some previous-gen games in front of new players. So apparently the duo penned a deal to bring some upgraded Wii and Wii U titles to the Shield.

The Shield actually launched in China this week, with games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and PUNCH-OUT available at launch. Additional games, like Super Mario Galaxy, are on the way. Even the games are priced nicely, coming in at about $10 a pop.

The thing is, it's unlikely Nintendo will want to offer their games on the platform outside of China since the Switch is doing so well. But now we're curious if, at some point, these titles will hit the Switch. We now know that they can run fine on NVIDIA hardware, and this includes GameCube titles that will be on the Shield at some point. Perhaps this serves the added purpose of testing what might eventually be a new version of the Virtual Console outside of China?

Since the Switch's launch, fans have been clamoring for a return of the classic games market. None of Nintendo's old-school favorites are available on the new console/portable hybrid, which seems like a pretty good way of leaving a ridiculous amount of money on the table. Of course, we've never really understood how/why Nintendo does things, so maybe they've got something planned that will eventually make sense. Or maybe folks screaming in my Twitter feed are correct and Nintendo actively dislikes money.

Either way, we can't help but get a little excited about the possibilities here. This is great news for China and could evolve into equally cool news for the rest of the world at some point. For now, though, all anyone can do is keep their fingers crossed for a Virtual Console holiday miracle.